I spent this past weekend celebrating a friend’s wedding in Columbus, Ohio. If you’ve ever been involved with a wedding– yours or someone else’s– then you’re aware of all the fanfare and fuss that surround it. Not only are there standard elements in almost every wedding ceremony, but there are also rehearsal dinners, toasts, first looks, dancing, dining, and so much more. It is an event nearly defined by rituals. Marriage itself seems something entirely different.
In the whirlwind of preparation before the wedding, she and I sat in a moment of quiet reflection. We need rituals, she said. Perhaps they don’t change anything in our physical reality– but in our emotional-spiritual space, rituals occupy a lot of significance.
You’ve likely heard it said that humans are creatures of habit. Whether good or bad, we tend to practice and repeat the same actions. Rituals are simply habits imbued with meaning. We do them not simply to accomplish something external to ourselves, but to move the intentions that rest internally. We need rituals: they give us rhythm, meaning, and reminders of purpose.
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Here are a few examples of the rituals I keep:
- I start my day with a written schedule and a homemade cappuccino. This helps me keep track of where my time is going and what I want to accomplish. The combination of the planning and the coffee has become a morning rhythm: the taste of coffee helps me reflect on my priorities of the day, and writing them down helps me be intentional throughout the day.
- I couple my trip to the grocery store with a 30-minute workout at the gym. I do this to combine two tasks that keep my body healthy. I don’t want to expect food alone to nourish my body, so I usually stop by the gym first.
- I meet with friends and spend time outdoors on the weekend. To bring balance work and rest, I’ve learned that I need to set a full day aside– not just a few hours here and there. Rest means reconnecting with people we love, laughing with them, being creative, and enjoying the sunshine. I could probably rest as easily with a long nap and good book, but I know that I need these things to truly feel that I stepped away from work entirely.
What rituals have taught me
There’s a cyclical relationship between our values and our rituals. We perform rituals because of the values we hold; but the more we perform the rituals, the greater significance those values bear.
Rituals are richer in meaning than habits. I might have the habit of cleaning the dishes right after the meal, or making sure to get gas at my preferred gas station on Tuesdays. But they don’t represent any particular value that I want to live by– not important ones, anyway.
The purpose behind the rituals I have created is that they assist me in renewing my mind on a regular basis. These are areas in which I need constant reminders of what I believe: otherwise, the entropy of my soul will take over, and I will soon be consumed by far more degenerate thoughts than the ones I want to live by.
How to build your own rituals: a step-by-step guide
1) Determine an area in which you’d like a ritual. Here’s a hint: take an area of your life where you’d like healthier, better practices and thoughts. It could be time management, health, simplifying, resting, organizing, connecting, or learning.
2) Identify practicable, repeatable actions that you could do (or already do) that relate to this area. It could mean a weekly phone call you already make, or learning to pick up gratitude journaling if you don’t already.
3) Set a rhythm in place for this action, coupling it with another action that adds value. This could mean listening to uplifting music as you get ready in the morning. It could mean applying a relaxing hand cream while you say your evening prayers.
4) Create an accountability system through a partner or incentive. Developing new rituals can be difficult, especially as they might seem a bit arbitrary at first. Have someone check in with you as you seek to put your rituals in place. Give yourself an incentive to work towards as the ritual becomes second nature.
The bottom line: ritualize the things you value.
Weddings are so much work, and from the outside looking in, they seem a bit ridiculous. An already chaotic, adrenaline-rushing event is compounded with a thousand tasks that seem impossible to complete. While some of those tasks really are quite frivolous, the majority of them have a real purpose. Rituals add meaning, and we need them to do that for us.
Likewise, your daily or weekly rituals might appear to require more effort. But there’s little else to keep us from rushing to meet the most urgent or demanding need, and from becoming completely ruled by the spontaneity of the situations we’re in. When we have rituals in place, we create structures within which we live our lives. They keep us standing, and they help us continue to move in our direction of choice.
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What are some areas where you need rituals? What rituals do you already have?
I’ll email you today!
Hey Holly! So great to meet you and I’d love to talk more about minimalism. 🙂 Shoot me an email if you haven’t already!
Hi Daisy – I am so happy that found your post. I’ve been developing rituals for myself recently but when you said “ritualize the things you value” it really clicked into place in a way it hadn’t before. I subbed to your newsletter and I’d love to chat with you. I’ve been living as a minimalist for ~4 years, but there’s always ways to grow and do it better so it’s lovely to talk with people who ‘get it’. 🙂
Holly O.
When I was a kid, the 90s version of rituals (routine) was what I hoped to escape when I become an adult. But as an adult in 2016, I crave rituals.
Knowing I’ll wake up every morning to eat my chia seed breakfast bowl with bananas & strawberries in bed gives me a sense of control to be able to face the day. Something I can’t always get in my personal relationships or at work.
I think part of the shift from routines > rituals is the control over the activity. Routine was something that is forced on us. Ritual is something we choose. And I choose the confidence that my rituals give me!
Another great angle on a topic :).
This post speaks so much to me Daisy! We’re going through a series right now at church about the rhythm of our lives, and I love how practicing rituals fits in with this topic perfectly. I loved what you said about rituals reminding us about what we believe and what our values are. They make our lives richer—such a good perspective to have. I’m going to work on forming more meaningful rituals this week! 🙂
Life with Caleb has thrown me so off balance but this is one thing I was processing while away from him last week. I need to figure out a way to have time to analyze life and figure out they why behind things and the priorities of what’s important. I guess those are rituals I’m working on!
I was talking to Edward about just this last night. We both work from home now and Edward has really been struggling with finding a schedule. Luckily, I worked from home a year longer than him and I found that the best thing to do is to just go on with your days as if you are still interacting with the outside world. It is so easy to sleep in till last minute and go to work in your pajamas and it’s great for the first two weeks and then it all goes downhill from there. So now we wake up, do insanity (newest ritual.. p.s. it’s killing me), shower up, have breakfast together (something we NEVER did before) and go our separate ways. Since we’ve formed these new rituals we get to spend more time with each other in more meaningful ways while also maintaining our sanity.
So spot on! I have to have rituals it just makes my days run smoothly and keeps things in order. I am with you on needing a full day of rest. Saturday is total rest day and always starts with a quiet morning of coffee and reading, I look forward to it all week!
Oh, that works! It’s good to have a rhythm in your week that triggers memory to do important tasks!
Glad you agree, Jo-Anne! Thanks for being here.
Thank you Ana! I so appreciate that! 🙂 And routines are definitely useful for streamlining our days… and also for making sure that we get to those pesky tasks we would so often prefer to skip! Thank you for stopping by!
Hey Kelly! Yes… some traditional rituals can seem so strange to us– I must say I enjoy creating my own! Also, I see that you have a URL! Can’t wait to see what’s to come 🙂
Thank you Aliyyah! I’m so glad you stopped by! I am also working on a full morning ritual. 🙂
Hahah! I am with you on the latte! Although, making one at home does help with the whole budget issue… 😉 I find that when I sit down with a hot drink, I’m just more likely to be deliberate and thorough with my tasks. I blame 5 years of cold New England winters!
Thanks for reading, Alyssa! It’s so good that you have some silence in the morning… there can be so much noise throughout our day that our minds hardly get a chance to rest from it all. Also, so great you’re an RA! I’m sure you’re a fabulous one.
Thank you Liz! I love your ritual– I do the same! 🙂 Let me know how you like making your schedule over coffee. I just feel like those few moments of gathering my mind make such a huge difference.
I’m not sure this qualifies as a ritual but it is a habit I developed that helps me. I read online the daily comics from my local paper. When they expand into the Sunday ones it is time to do my weekly computer backups. I need a reminder to do my backups and I love that this one is automatic.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, we all need routines and rituals in our lives
I love having a routine – it makes everything so easy! Your rituals are so meaningful – I should start writing down my schedule in the morning. Rituals aside, I just discovered your blog and I think you have beautiful pictures and interesting posts. I will definitely come back again and again. 🙂
Loved this. I remember taking a class on rituals and community in college — I really miss the days of studying random things. And my wedding really made realize how primitive, for lack of a better word, some of our rituals can be — yet so meaningful. I like to start my day with a cup of tea and something to read. But I really need some kind of schedule to keep me on track during the day!
This is a great post. I have a loose morning routine that I could make more specific to align with my values.
I had this exact same conversation with my sister last night. We were talking about saving money and things we could cut out of our lives. I mentioned that I could give up a lot of things but the one thing I couldn’t get up is $3 latte every day. There is just such a joy and wonderful feeling I get from it every morning. (my dad also said that for everyone’s sanity in my life, I shouldn’t give up my daily late habit haha)
Your rituals sound quite fulfilling! I’ve taken to working in silence when I first get up as I go through my email, blogroll, and tackle any projects I know I can do before breakfast. This is my quite time of the day (especially important because I am an RA in the freshman dorms and they tend to be loud!). Then, when I start to physically get ready I play happy, upbeat music to get myself in a good mindset. I’m certainly going to think of other ways rituals can be incorporated in my life!
I love this. My morning ritual includes making a cup of french press coffee and sitting down at my computer to do some reading/e-mailing/or blog editing. I really like the idea of using the time to write down a list of my priorities for the day. I use my calendar to block time for different types of work, but I’m a huge lover of lists and am definitely going to try my hand at a list during my morning coffee. Thanks for the idea!
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